Create/Rip MP3 files from your CD

How to cre­ate dig­i­tal music files from your CD — here's one method. Assumes Win­dows XP systems.

Cre­at­ing MP3 files is quite sim­ple, plenty of ways of doing it. Here's one that works for me, on Win­dows plat­forms. It may look daunt­ing thanks to all the detail on this page but it's really quite sim­ple. Should take no more than 10 min­utes to get it working.

Get­ting "FreeRip"

I use the free MP3 rip­per called, quite aptly, FreeRip: Get it free from here. When the dia­log box appears to "Open" or "Save" it (the word­ing may be dif­fer­ent depend­ing on your browser) it's fine to just Open and exe­cute it. We don't need the instal­la­tion file.

Installing "FreeRip"

1. Click on through the first few screens that show you license and all the usual stuff.
2. The first screen to pay atten­tion to is the one that allows you to cre­ate "Desk­top Icon", "Quick Launch" icon, etc. On this screen, dis­able what­ever you don't need, but MAKE SURE you dis­able the "Install the My Global Search Toolbar".
3. Click on through to the end. On the last screen, you may also want to uncheck "Explore FreeRip com­mu­nity" although leav­ing this on is not a major mistake.
4. That's it, it's done.

One-time cus­tomiza­tion of FreeRip

FreeRip is quite easy to use, but it's nice to cus­tomize some set­tings the first time you use it.

Start FreeRip from your START menu, or from the desk­top icon if you allowed that to be installed. It should look some­thing like this:
Now, on to cus­tomiz­ing. Click on the first menu item called "CD" and then on "Options".

1. Gen­eral: Here, uncheck "Show 'please reg­is­ter' reminders". Make sure default for­mat is 1-MP3.
2. Out­put Path: Make sure you change the "Base Path" to the loca­tion where you would like your MP3 files stored. I've selected the typ­i­cal "My Music" inside "My Doc­u­ments". As follows:
3. Device: No change.
4. Encod­ing: Change "Min Bitrate" to 192. This is usu­ally CD qual­ity, 256 only cre­ates a huge file. If you want to rip music mainly to share, 128 MB is fine too.
5. Inter­net: No change, but make sure "3-Offline Mode" is selected.
6. Exten­sions: Uncheck "Search bar". You don't need it.
7. Freedb: Uncheck "Auto­mat­i­cally check freedb when online", unless you know what you're doing and would like the feature.
8. That's it. We're done. Click on OK.

Using FreeRip

This is all you'll do from now on. Every­time you want to rip MP3 files from a CD, sim­ply insert the CD and click on CD –> REFRESH. FreeRip will auto­mat­i­cally list all the files. You can click on these "tracks" and change their names to what­ever the song name is on the CD. Also make sure you enter the Artist and Album name, this will go into the folder that is cre­ated for this CD. Next, click on the green tick icon to select all tracks for rip­ping. Finally, click on the CD icon to start rip­ping. When done, check your MY MUSIC folder in MY DOCUMENTS, that's where the new folder should have been cre­ated.